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The Council of Canadians held a rally today in opposition to the Kinder Morgan pipeline that drew 200+ people to Parliament Hill, 24,000 views on CBC and another 20,000 views via the Coast Protectors Facebook page.

We called this rally after federal Finance Minister Bill Morneau announced that the Trudeau government was willing to provide indemnification to Texas-based Kinder Morgan - or another investor willing to take on the pipeline - for any financial loss due to British Columbia's opposition the pipeline. While Morneau refuses to say how much the government is willing to compensate Kinder Morgan, and Infrastructure Minister Amarjeet Sohi says the public won't know until a deal is struck, a former TransCanada chief executive officer has suggested it could be a $10 billion indemnity.

The rally, hosted by Council of Canadians campaigner Andrea Harden-Donahue, featured a welcome to unceded Algonquin territory by Elder Verna McGregor and speeches by Union of British Columbia Indian Chiefs vice-president Chief Robert Chamberlin (via cellphone from British Columbia/Coast Salish territories), NDP leader Jagmeet Singh (alongside MPs Fin Donnelly, Nathan Cullen and Alexandre Boulerice), Green Party leader Elizabeth May, and Council of Canadians honorary chairperson Maude Barlow.

Chief Chamberlin stated, “It’s with great disappointment from all across the country that we see the government willing to take taxpayers’ dollars to bail out a project that simply should not be built." And Barlow highlighted, "We need to respect Indigenous rights. We need to protect water, our water is at risk.”

In its report on the rally, iPolitics notes, "Singh is calling on the government to take the money it was planning to use to compensate Kinder Morgan investors in the proposed Trans Mountain pipeline expansion and instead invest in clean energy jobs."

To watch the CBC video of the rally please click here, on the Coast Protectors page here, our Facebook post on it is here, and our tweet about it is here.

To add your name to our online petition 'Back off Trudeau, respect Indigenous rights and BC's no to Kinder Morgan', please click here.